EDMONTON - Adria Grewal was told a million times before she married Dory Parsonage last fall how fast a wedding day races by, how important it was to take it all in. It was advice she took to heart.

“I made a conscious effort to enjoy the moments,” says the 26-year-old. “I didn’t want the day to pass by in a blur.”

Before Adria and Dory were a couple, they were part of a group. Both students at the University of Alberta in 2007 — he in engineering, she in business — they had friends in common and often found themselves at the same places at the same time. She’s not sure how much time passed before she asked one of their mutual friends to make discreet inquiries as to whether he might be interested in going on a date with her. The friend turned out to be anything but discreet, but it really didn’t matter.

The answer came almost immediately, and days later he came to pick her up in his little red truck for their first official date, dinner at Upper Crust. They went for a walk afterwards in Walterdale Park and wound up getting lost in the river valley, an unexpected adventure that saw them wending their way through random neighbourhoods. When they came upon a bench that offered a perfect view, they decided to sit and watch the sunset, a romantic moment that was broken by a veritable cloud of voracious mosquitoes.

“They came out to feast on us,” says Adria. “We called our friend Brett to come rescue us and drive us back to the red truck. Dory doesn’t remember what we ate for dinner on our first date, but he does remember that I wanted ice cream from Block 1912.

“We shared two scoops of ice cream in a bowl, but I ate most of it!”

Ice cream became a recurring theme on ensuing dates, of which there were many. The little red truck had no air conditioning, and on subsequent road trips, to Calgary and Banff, to Drumheller, to Manitoba to visit Dory’s family on the farm, Adria always used that as an excuse when she talked Dory into making impromptu ice-cream stops.

In December 2011, they travelled to Arizona, where his family was spending Christmas. The couple decided to take a road trip between Christmas and New Year’s, and spent two days in Tucson. On the final day there, they walked around the old town, shopped in funky stores and — of course — stopped for ice cream.

That evening they decided to have an early dinner at the restaurant in the hotel where they were staying. They ate outside on the patio, lingering over appetizers, drinks and dinner. It was the day before New Year Eve’s, and all around them the hotel staff was readying for the big night.

Unbeknownst to Adria, Dory had big plans of his own.

Later that same night, in the lounge, he dropped to one knee beside their table, took her hands in his and asked her to be his wife.

The answer, of course, was never in question.

Their wedding day, says Adria, was never meant to be a “big fat Indian wedding.”

“We really wanted to blend both religions and beliefs into our wedding,” she says. “And we wanted to be surrounded by our family and friends and have a fun time.”

When that day came last fall, Adria took a deep breath and slowed the world around her.

She paused to remember the conversations she had with the people whose love she cherished, closed her eyes to recall the warmth of their heartfelt embraces. She felt the promise of the words she spoke to the man she loved during the ceremony, blinked back grateful tears when a longtime family friend stepped forward to recite an Indian prayer. When the couple turned to face their guests as man and wife, she looked into the sea of smiling faces and felt blessed.

She revelled in the celebration that followed. She raised her arms to encircle her husband’s shoulders for their first dance, to country music star Blake Shelton’s Honey Bee, reached even higher when the music took on the joyful abandon of a Bollywood tempo.

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